Making Friends and Influencing People

Customer care, like hospitality, is at the heart of making people feel they matter.

Efficiency, especially in an era of changing employment patterns, relies heavily on staff retention - which makes customer care among colleagues at all levels in the workplace essential for smooth operation.

Is there anything worse than being ignored? Try making eye-contact with a poorly-trained shop assistant.  In most cases it's merely a matter of manners.  In commerce and industry it can be a serious problem demanding swift resolution.

Focus for Change http://www.focus4change.co.uk/ hears frequent case-studies of inter-personal disasters aired among delegates to its customer care workshops, one of the company's extending portfolio of interactive seminars conducted for organisations in both the public and private sector.

The causes are many and varied; staff shortages leading to short cuts, the increasing use of casually-crafted emails - or people in just too much of a hurry.

A highly-regarded musician friend opened a letter the other day from the human resources department of the university where he has been an eminent tutor for many years to be told the library ticket essential to his work would not be renewed.  Shocked, he was told that so far as the bureaucrats were concerned, he was no longer employed!

An extreme case of cumputer error, worsened by the lack of a ready apology.  He had a long wait for confirmation that he did indeed remained employed by the university where he has worked for 22 years.

The other side of the coin presented me with a textbook example of customer care, successfully achieved and without a public relations consultant in sight!

It happened on a hot day in Croatia at Pula's small and under-developed airport.  We began boarding the plane for home, but were turned back to the departure gate.  There was a delay, the public address system announced, baldly.  Why and for how long we asked among ourselves. Rumours quickly spread among anxious families quietening children.

Then the captain arrived and called us round him like a Scout leader addressing his patrol.  A bird had been struck by one of the engines on landing, he explained.  Initial tests registered no damage, but he decided to stay on the safe side and call for a specialist inspection. He had been advised the nearest engineer was hours away in Istanbul, but had been able to locate suitably qualified inspectors much closer.

He apologised profusely.  He added he wanted to get home for the weekend too and won the sympathy of passengers earlier in classic grumbler-traveller mood.

We reached our destination safely, everybody had a bird-strike story to tell the folks back home and the charter airline collected congratulatory messages on its crew's oustanding customer care.

Put into the picture in that spartan waiting-room, everyone knew that we mattered.